Clerks Star Lisa Spoonauer Passes Away; Kevin Smith Pays Tribute

Lisa Spoonauer’s acting career was brief, consisting of only two movies and a handful of ancillary projects related to one of them. A New Jersey native who was part of Kevin Smith’s cast of unknowns and later dated, and was briefly married to Jeff Anderson, Spoonauer starred in Smith’s seminal 1994 film Clerks as Caitlin Bree, the sultry, suspenders-clad ex-girlfriend pined over by star Dante (Brian O’Halloran).

It may have been Spoonauer’s first movie, but she made it count, with a character resolution – she mistakenly has sex with a dead guy, believing him to be Dante, in the bathroom of the Quickstop – that likely wasn’t forgotten by anyone who saw the film, and was even wistfully recalled years later by characters in other Smith movies like Chasing Amy.

Lisa Spoonauer died this week at the age of 44, Smith announced on his Instagram page (see his post below). No cause of death has been announced. Spoonauer was just 20 years old when Smith cast her in Clerks, his famously low-budget, convenience store-set comedy, in 1992.

A post shared by Kevin Smith (@thatkevinsmith) on May 23, 2017 at 2:32pm PDT

–

Smith, as he told the story in the Instagram post, discovered Spoonauer in an acting class at Brookdale Community College and approached her afterwards about appearing in the movie. After Clerks, Spoonauer’s only other movie credit was the 1997 indie comedy Bartender, although she would appear in a few Clerks-related projects, including a voice part in 2000’s Clerks: The Animated Seriesand participation in the 2016 documentary Shooting Clerks. Spoonauer, who dated Anderson on the set of the movie and was married to him for a few years, went on to remarry, have a daughter and spend most of her professional life as a restaurant manager and event planner, in her native New Jersey.

Spoonauer’s story shows that even as moments and performances from beloved movies become part of the public consciousness over time, they might only encompass a very small part in the life of the actors involved. Lisa Spoonauer likely only spent a couple of weeks playing Caitlin Bree, and just a little bit more time than that on movie acting in general.

Clerks may have been weird, crude, and vulgar, and may have stood as a peak for Smith right at the beginning of his career, but it’s also an important moment in the history of the 1990s Miramax era and American independent film in general, and it has attained cinematic immortality. Lisa Spoonauer, despite her brief career, will always be a part of that.